F63: Failure of Success Criterion 2.4.4 due to providing link context only in content that is not related to the link

Important Information about Techniques

See Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria for important information about the usage of these informative techniques and how they relate to the normative WCAG 2.0 success criteria. The Applicability section explains the scope of the technique, and the presence of techniques for a specific technology does not imply that the technology can be used in all situations to create content that meets WCAG 2.0.

Applicability

Description

This describes a failure condition when the context needed for understanding the purpose of a link is located in content that is not programmatically determined link context. If the context for the link is not provided in one of the following ways:

in the same sentence, paragraph, list item, or table cell as the link

in the preceding heading

via a suitable ARIA property such as aria-label or aria-labelledby

then the user will not be able to find out where the link is going with any ease. If the user must leave the link to search for the context, the context is not programmatically determined link context and this failure condition occurs.

Examples

Failure Example 1: A Link in an Adjacent Paragraph

A news service lists the first few sentences of an article in a paragraph. The next paragraph contains the link "Read More...". Because the link is not in the same paragraph as the lead sentence, the user cannot easily discover what the link will let the user read more about.

<p>A British businessman has racked up 2 million flyer miles and plans to
travel on the world's first commercial tourism flights to space.</p>
<p><a href="ff.html">Read More...</a></p>

Failure Example 2: A Link in an Adjacent Cell Within a Layout Table

An audio site provides links to where its player can be downloaded. The information about what would be downloaded by the link is in the preceding row of the layout table, which is not programmatically determined context for the link.

Check whether the link context can be programmatically determined in some other way, for example, by using a WAI-ARIA property such as aria-label, aria-labelledby or aria-describedby on the link to provide sufficient context

Expected Results

If check #1 AND check #2 are false, the content fails the Success Criterion.